DETROIT — Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.
GM, parts suppliers, university engineers and other automakers are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And Tuesday, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, GM chief executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to the driverless vehicles.
“This is not science fiction,” Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview.
The most significant obstacles facing the vehicles could be human rather than technical: government regulation, liability, privacy concerns and people’s passion for the automobile and the control it gives them.
Much of the technology already exists for vehicles to take the wheel: radar-based cruise control, motion sensors, lane-change warning devices, electronic stability control and satellite-based digital mapping. And automated vehicles could drastically improve life on the road, reducing crashes and congestion.
If people are interested.
“Now the question is, What does society want to do with it?” Burns said. “You’re looking at these issues of congestion, safety, energy and emissions. Technically, there should be no reason why we can’t transfer to a totally different world.”
GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said.
He said the company plans to test driverless-car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018.
A key benefit of the technology could be safer roads.
